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OpenType FAQ
Briefly, OpenType is a font format jointly developed by Adobe and Microsoft in the late 1990s. It came into wider use only after 2000, when Adobe included support for advanced typographic features in their InDesign, PhotoShop, and Illustrator applications. OpenType fonts support Unicode, which means that a single OpenType font can contain more than 65,000 glyphs. A single font could be used for setting various texts, whether in English, Czech, Russian, Greek or Esperanto. OpenType fonts are cross-platform; the same file can be used on Mac and PC, and OpenType fonts should behave consistently on both platforms.
Of course not all OpenType fonts contain thousands of characters. In fact, most of the available OpenType fonts on the market are fonts converted from PostScript and contain only 256 glyphs. Typotheque offers Std and Pro fonts, with wide language support, eight different numeral styles, inferior and superior forms, case sensitive forms, arrows, pictograms, and more.
Which typographic features do Typotheque OpenType fonts support?
See our special page which presents features currently supported by Typotheque fonts.
How can I access Small Caps inside your OpenType fonts?
See our special page with the answer to your question.
If there are so many characters in the font, and I still have an old keyboard, how do I find all these characters?
Many of the special characters are activated by turning on the feature in your applications. For example, you could select a piece of text and convert it to small caps or to superior letters without retyping the text all over again. Or when a ligature feature is on, it automatically replaces combining letter pairs with ligatures. So, in a name like ‘Kafka’, the letter combination ‘fk’ would be recognized and replaced with the ‘fk’ ligature. Some OpenType substitutions are programmed to work in certain portions of text – e.g. special swash or alternate glyph forms automatically appear only at the beginning or at the end of a word. See more in-depth OpenType feature instructions in this PDF file.
Do I need special software to use OpenType fonts?
No special software is needed if your computer fulfills the minimum system requirements (all newer computers do). However, advanced OpenType features are application dependent. See this detailed list of supported features.
Which applications do OpenType fonts work in?
See our special page which shows OpenType support from various applications.
Will my old fonts work in these OpenType-savvy applications?
Yes. The applications are backwards compatible, so you can continue using your older fonts for a while.
Can I upgrade my PostScript/TrueType fonts to OpenType?
At Typotheque, you can upgrade previously licensed fonts in other formats to OpenType. We will deduct the price you have already paid. For example, if you upgrade Fedra Sans Book for which you paid 60 Euro, for Fedra Sans Std Book (priced at 90 Euro) you will only have to pay 30 Euro extra. Since we need to verify your previous order, please write to us directly with your upgrade requests.
Why are your OpenType fonts so expensive?
Our standard PostScript fonts are priced at 60 Euro per font. That is a generally accepted price for high-quality fonts. Our OpenType Std fonts contain over 1,000 glyphs and contain characters which were only available previously in six separate fonts. In addition to this, the OpenType font will work on both Mac and PC. A single Typotheque OpenType Std font costs 1.5 × the price of a PostScript font, which is 90 Euro. Typotheque OpenType Pro fonts contain over 2,000 glyphs and contain characters from as many as eleven previously-available separate fonts. A single Typotheque OpenType Pro font is 2 × the price of a PostScript font, which is 120 Euro. What was the question again?
How do I install OpenType fonts?
See this page.
I've heard talk about two different kinds of OpenType fonts, what is the difference?
In OpenType fonts, glyphs can be defined by bezier curves (which are generally known as PostScript-flavoured OpenType or OpenType CFF), or quadratic splines (referred to as TrueType-flavoured OpenType). All Adobe fonts now are PostScript-flavoured OpenType, and they tend to focus on advanced typographic features. Microsoft favours TrueType-flavoured OpenType which basically means standard TrueType fonts with a large multilingual character set. TrueType-flavoured OpenType is not well supported on Macintosh.